China Wife

by Hedley Harrison

  It was a good decision. As the back window shattered above her, the passenger let out a strangled grunt and pitched forward. It was an amazing piece of marksmanship. There wasn’t much of the back of his head left. The odds had lengthened again.

  A succession of laboured grunts attracted Janice’s attention. The driver was taking desperate counteraction. As the car swerved all over the road to confuse the gunman in the following vehicle, the handgun of the Chinese thug in the passenger seat slithered down into the well at Janice’s feet. She grabbed at it and released herself from her seatbelt. It was another change in the odds.

  Nothing happened for a few moments. Unseen by Janice, the following car had drawn back to give the passenger a clearer and steadier target. The shot crashed into the back of the head-rest. The driver let out a scream and lost control of the car. It was another astonishingly accurate shot.

  ‘He’s not dead,’ Janice muttered as she realised that the driver was clawing at the steering wheel trying to get the vehicle under control.

  He didn’t succeed.

  Janice threw herself up on to the back seat as the car failed to respond to the frantic efforts of the stunned driver. Out of the passenger side window she saw a densely packed line of gum trees. Shooting off the road into a partially cleared area of forest, the car careered down the slope. Janice swung around behind the driver and braced herself. Her movement wasn’t any too soon.

  Snagged on a tree stump the vehicle reared up and crashed over on to its roof. The scream from the driver Janice later realised occurred when he was catapulted through the wind-screen carrying the largely ineffective airbag with him. Crushed as the car then fell on him, he died instantly.

  The second scream that Janice heard turned out to be herself as she was thrown against the back of the front seats, struck her head on the car roof and felt the tearing slashes of the remaining shards of glass in the back window as she was thrown out.

  Skidding over the body of the dead driver and the leaf-strewn ground, the upside down car slithered slowly into another tree stump and stopped.

  Jesus!

  Janice didn’t stop to wonder what deep memory had thrown up such an exclamation. Battered, bruised and bleeding, she was as rigid as a board in her fear. It was only in the seconds after she relaxed that she found that she was still clutching the minder’s handgun.

  The smell of petrol pulled her back to reality. Her immediate fear was that the car would explode. Getting away was her only priority.

  She instantly sought the shelter of the trees to her right as she scanned up the slope to the road. At first, she could see no movement.

  Then, as she crouched in the mess of leaves and young gum trees, her senses focused and she saw that someone, also gun in hand, was cautiously making his way down through the cleared area of tree stumps towards the wreckage.

  ‘He must be the shooter,’ she told herself, the memories of the precision of his marksmanship steadying her.

  The man was now abreast of her and was easing himself forward in a crouching body motion with the gun held two-handed at the ready. He peered into the mangled remains of what had once been a rather classy four-wheeled-drive Toyota.

  Janice knew that he would soon realise that she wasn’t there. She needed to act. Mindful of the crackling rustling sound that dead gum leaves make, she raised herself upright and then on to her toes. The man was three or four metres away and when he came around from the front of the mess of buckled metal he was bound to see her.

  Down the side of the hill and in the trees, the sound of her shot seemed muffled. As the man pitched backwards from the force of her bullet, Janice started up the hill, still trying to keep within the shelter of the trees. The last thing she wanted was to be confronted by the man’s companion and the next to last thing was to find that the driver had seen or heard what had happened and taken off.

  Neither thing happened. He hadn’t stirred from his vehicle. Still skirting the trees right up to the road, Janice approached the car from behind and in the man’s blind spot. She ripped open the door and pushed the gun into his face before standing back.

  ‘Out!’ she said.

  She gestured the man out of the car, hit him on the back of the head with her gun and kneed him down the slope all in a few split seconds. A truck was approaching over the brow of the undulation of the road three hundred metres away. Janice wanted to be in the car and moving before the truck driver could think that there might be something wrong.

  Several dozen Chinese people, mainly Australian nationals, were arrested in the next few hours and days. The whole apparatus of the organised people trafficking was rolled up. It was quick, clinical and effective. A chain reaction started that reached back and linked into the UK, Canada and the US. April Cheng, the fourth woman in the group that included Alice and Janice, was located and taken into protective custody in Mildura in Victoria. No other trafficked women were located.

  The Queensland Police quickly closed out the site of the car wreck to reporters and issued a media statement that gave only the barest details of what had happened.

  The reactions in mainland China varied from intense satisfaction to panic. Various levels of Chinese officialdom experienced one or other of these emotions. Mr Xu, however, was not one of those who panicked; nor was he one of those who initiated a tactical close-down of their activities. He’d sat out more than one attempt by the Chinese authorities to put an end to the sort of illicit business activities that he indulged in. This, however, was not a good time for those officials whose loyalties had been subverted by Mr Xu; debts were called in. From past experience, it wouldn’t take long for Mr Xu’s brand of normality to reassert itself.

  Meanwhile, on the flight to Hong Kong, Janice sat next to an interesting and entertaining character, an Englishman, in the certain knowledge that the seat allocation was not accidental.

  Melbourne Gazette

  Continental Edition – Friday, 27 August 2010

  PEOPLE TRAFFICKING ROUND-UP

  In an action coordinated by the Federal Police and Immigration Service, police forces in Queensland, New South Wales, Victoria and the ACT moved to close down major people trafficking operations that have ramifications in mainland China, Canada, the US, the UK and South America.

  As reported in The Gazette on 1 July 2010, the Victorian Police interrupted a trafficking movement of young Chinese women. Four of the young women were destined for the sex trade; the fifth, a Canadian citizen of Brazilian origin was returned to her country of birth. The police at the time were tight-lipped about both this last young woman and a sixth who had seemingly disappeared, indicating that the circumstances surrounding their presence in Australia were more complex.

  In a statement in Canberra, the Federal Commissioner of Police said that three branches of the people trafficking business were being actively addressed. The illegal importation of girls and young women for the sex trade was a problem that the authorities had been battling for years.

  ‘This is the most widespread and difficult trade to suppress,’ the Commissioner said.

  The trafficking of both men and women seeking a better life was also a long-standing problem rife with exploitation by criminal gangs. The traffickers were becoming more sophisticated and were exploiting the various regulations in the Europe, the UK and elsewhere often riding their illegal activities on the back of the legal movement of economic migrants.

  ‘Again this activity, which has been highlighted all too often by the tragedies taking place off the Australian coast, is difficult to contain,’ the Commissioner continued. ‘However, with the cooperation of the Indonesian authorities, this is a battle we think we are winning.’

  ‘The key feature,’ the Commissioner went on to say, ‘about all of these activities, and particularly the third, is the involvement of mainland Chinese criminal gangs. The Beijing authorities have alerted us to a new and unusual trafficking activity which they have not yet been able to completely identify. The trafficking
of educated young women of much higher value to certain interests in China has become a concern, partly because the gangs masterminding the movements are suspected of having corrupt relationships within the Chinese administrative machine but more particularly because the movement is into China not out of it.’

  The Commissioner was picking his words carefully. Immigration into China is controlled much more rigorously than into most countries. The reasons for this are political, although sources at the External Affairs Department did make the point that with the massive excess in the male population the issue was sensitive.

  The numbers are small, although the profits are enormous. The Commissioner outlined the actions being taken – which he described as ‘mechanical’ – to remove the organisations and resources that have been used to move these special women from particularly Canada and the UK to Australia.

  ‘The trafficking route, with the help of the Canadian authorities, has now been identified. A number of Chinese Australian citizens have been arrested and charged. Several safe houses of various sorts in various locations have been seized and closed down. So far, only two women have been rescued and returned to their countries of origin. This, in turn, has led to further arrests in Canada, the United States, Brazil and Argentina.’

  In response to The Gazette’s question, the Commissioner declined to comment on the nature of the Chinese end of the trafficking route. A representative of the External Affairs Department at a subsequent press conference emphasised the sensitivity of the issue with the Chinese. She qualified her remarks by saying that issues of corruption were currently in very high profile in Beijing and that the Australian Government was anxious to support the Chinese authorities in any way that they could.

  31

  David Hutchinson had been to China before. He had travelled widely in the carefully managed way that Western journalists were normally permitted to travel. Getting visas had taken rather longer than expected, and some careful negotiations between Susie Peveral and the Chinese First Secretary, Mr Luo, in Canberra had been necessary. Julius Luo, being more knowledgeable about journalists of David’s ilk, wanted guarantees from Susie about what he might write about after the visit was over. Being an observer while the Chinese authorities closed down a people trafficking activity that had tentacles stretching into some normally inaccessible places was one thing; writing analytical articles when back in the UK was something else completely. The Chinese certainly wanted to be seen as transparent and whiter than white in an area that had imposed significant strains on relations with the Western democracies, but background stories and speculations about a society that could produce such a rigid political control system yet have so little control over determined individuals were never going to be welcome.

  David, despite the intimate explanations from Susie Peveral that he had had, still wasn’t clear exactly what, out of a minefield of topics, he was supposed to write about and where it was to be published. The only thing that was clear was that both the UK and Australian Governments expected him to deliver. It was an entirely new situation for him; his work had been censored in the past but generally it was because he deliberately crossed lines. Here he didn’t know where the lines were that he shouldn’t cross.

  It’s always the same in higher politics, David thought to himself. As usual, the real issues have got lost somewhere in the game playing and position taking.

  Janice Liang knew who the man sitting opposite her was; she had been briefed by Mr Luo. David had no idea who she was.

  Janice was feeling pleased with herself. She was also feeling rather battered after her incarceration by Mr Xu’s Australian henchmen. Not only had she managed to retain her cover throughout a very stressful and lengthy period spanning three continents, she had successfully escaped the clutches of Xu’s organisation and directly and indirectly caused a very substantial part of it to be closed down. She had every confidence that the Australian authorities would successfully complete the job. She also had a much clearer idea of the identity of some of the officials and politicians who were profiting from the trafficking activities.

  If David had known who Janice was, he might well have speculated in a way that would have given Mr Luo serious cause for concern. But, in the Business Class comfort of a Qantas jet, David was no longer troubled by the reasons for his going to Shanghai. He had expressed his reservations in the appropriate places and had basically been told to get on with it – to lie back and enjoy it. Responsibility for the trip had been acknowledged on high in both London and Canberra.

  Never ever having travelled Business Class before, Janice was only too happy to sit back and enjoy the unaccustomed luxury.

  David, at first, hadn’t been so easily reconciled.

  ‘I don’t like this,’ David had said earlier to Susie in bed in their motel room.

  ‘For God’s sake, David, all you’ve got to do is go where they tell you, see what they want you to see, and say nice things afterwards.’

  But David still had a sense that there was something dishonest about what he was being asked to do. He had even spoken to another friend in the Foreign Office, but what he was fed back was that relations with the Chinese Government were more important than almost anything else. If the Chinese wanted an international journalist as an independent witness to a piece of internal political theatre, that’s what they were going to get.

  ‘Shit, David, and you accuse me of taking my business to bed with me!’

  Susie’s dismissal was accompanied by a sharp dig of her nails into the soft flesh of David’s inside thigh. It was the sort of power statement that she liked and he was getting used to. He had learned to respond forcefully.

  Taking her breasts in his hands, he used them to lever her on to her back. A slow sigh of contentment told David that that was what she had wanted. Once she did switch off her business brain, Susie’s sexual urges came quickly and very physically. It was something that Susie had demonstrated in their earliest encounter backstage at the O2 Arena and she had never lost the taste for the sort of edgy sex that she found David so good at.

  When the taxi came to take him to the airport, David was exhausted from a non-existent night’s sleep and the most athletic sex that he had encountered from Susie to date. He was off to Brisbane, Hong Kong and Shanghai; Susie was to be corralled in Hong Kong when she eventually went to China.

  ‘The Chinese Embassy here aren’t too happy about my going at all,’ she said over a hurried breakfast, ‘but that’s probably because I hitched up my miniskirt for Julius Luo and showed him far more leg and boot leather than he’s accustomed to seeing.’

  David could imagine Susie giving Luo the come-on if she was being frustrated by his stonewalling. Equally, he was as aware as she was of the tortuous nature of Chinese diplomatic relations.

  ‘Won’t get much of that sort of thing in China, I guess?’

  ‘Don’t you believe it, David. I’d look out for a honey trap or two if I were you!’

  If his fellow passenger, the young Chinese woman now exchanging the insignificant opening chatter of a conversation with him, was a honey trap, David would never have recognised it.

  Content with Susie for the moment, David was happy enough to ease the tedium of the journey by engaging with Janice. As he was going to China, he reckoned that he needed to be able to get on with the Chinese and talking to the woman seemed like a harmless and inconsequential way of doing that.

  Janice was happy enough to get the conversation going; if she kept it light-hearted, it would make her life much easier later.

  She was going to see a lot more of this Westerner and she needed to at least be on relaxed terms with him.

  David, in his turn, wasn’t going to forget her. Subconscious comparisons of her rather gaunt good looks with Susie’s aristocratic prettiness would see to that.

  Mr Xu was an old man in a country where old men still held the bulk of the power. He never talked about the old days. His credentials as a Communist were highly questio
nable despite being the friend and even confidant of many prominent Party figures over many years. He always survived whatever the fortunes of these people turned out to be. He wasn’t openly and obviously corrupt; it was more that he was adept at making use of the State’s resources that he was charged with managing. There was always something in it for Mr Xu – he saw to that.

  What that something was, varied.

  At the very lowest level, Mr Xu was able to indulge his taste in Italian opera at virtually no expense to himself and his wheelchair had pride of place in the restricted areas of several national theatres. The villainy, the unrequited love and the grandiose pretensions of the heroes of Puccini, Rossini and Verdi offered no irony to Xu, even as he revelled in the intricacies of the plots.

  At a higher level, the numbers of favours out there to be collected were probably beyond Mr Xu’s count, if not Li Qiang’s.

  Li Qiang had been Mr Xu’s political secretary during his days of senior officialdom. Now that the old man had been long retired and well settled into a life of luxury and relative ease, Li Qiang had steadily ingratiated himself back into the role of Xu’s chief of staff while still retaining his senior post at the Ministry.

  Mr Xu didn’t trust Li Qiang in the way that he almost trusted Mr Kim but he knowingly allowed himself to become dependent on him, with the insurance that he had both detailed records of Mr Li’s illegal dealings on his behalf and the loyalty of the man’s driver. Mr Xu had determined that, if he ever had proven cause to distrust his henchman, Li Qiang’s life expectancy would be sharply reduced. Li Qiang knew this and he, too, had taken out insurance!

  So Mr Xu didn’t really care who owed him favours; he had the capability to call them in at any time. And as the Australian authorities effectively closed down his whole organisation in their country Xu knew that the need for damage limitation in China, Canada and the UK would result in many of these favours being required.